Quite a day for the stock market (derogatory)!

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When U.S. financial markets opened at 9:30 a.m. EDT on Monday morning, the tariff-related beatings continued. The S&P 500 dropped more than 200 points (or 4 percent of its value, which is a lot). The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is like the S&P but narrower in its range of companies, fell about the same amount.

But! At about 9:45 a.m., morale improved as a modest rally ensued, and then there was an even bigger spike upward about a half-hour later. What happened? The initial bounce back may have been the result of investors “buying the dip,” i.e., taking advantage of low prices on the expectation that the global economy will, eventually, recover. The steeper subsequent surge, though, seemed to correspond with a 10:13 a.m. tweet by a well-known pseudonymous financial news Twitter/X account that identifies itself as “Walter Bloomberg” even though it is not affiliated with the Bloomberg company:

“Hassett” here would be Kevin Hassett, the Donald Trump–appointed director of the National Economic Council. And if it were true that he’d said Trump was considering a pause on tariffs, it would make sense that the market would rally. But the White House subsequently denied that any pause was being considered, after which markets fell again.

Where did the idea that Hassett had said this come from? He did give an interview on Fox News on Monday morning in which he was asked about pausing tariffs, and his answer started with the word yeah, but in context it’s clear that he was just acknowledging the question, and he did not go on to say or even imply that a pause would be considered. Walter Bloomberg has since deleted his original tweet about the matter—but in an evident effort to prove that he didn’t just make the whole thing up, he published a 10:26 a.m. post that showed a headline, on some sort of newswire computer feed, attributing news of the 90-day pause to CNBC.

(Walter Bloomberg’s M.O. is copying headlines that appear elsewhere, changing them to an OFFICIAL-LOOKING ALL-CAPS FORMAT, and then posting them on Twitter. He has more than 800,000 followers. It’s wild how some people spend their time these days.)

Now, it’s true that on Monday morning a CNBC host did read a headline about a tariff pause aloud. But as you can see from the stock chart in this video, that moment took place after the rally had already begun:

If you look minute by minute at market activity, the “pause”-driven spike appears to start at 10:10 a.m. But the clock in the lower left corner of the clip above shows that it begins at 10:14 a.m.

So what gives? At 10:31 a.m., Walter Bloomberg made another post in which he said his original source for the pause headline had been Reuters. And Reuters did admit to Sherwood News that it had published an “incorrect report” about a tariff pause … but blamed CNBC:

A spokesperson for Reuters told Sherwood News that its headline was “drawing from a headline on CNBC.” The network did run that headline on air, but its unclear if it was drawing from its own newsroom’s reporting or if it was same Reuters headline everyone else was fooled by.

CNBC, for its part, admitted to the Wall Street Journal that it had aired an erroneous “banner,” or chyron:

CNBC said it aired unconfirmed information Monday morning when it reported the Trump administration was considering placing a 90-day pause on tariffs. The information, which appeared on CNBC’s news chyron, was also amplified by several other outlets, including Reuters. The S&P 500 briefly surged some 7%, then fell back to earth within minutes.

“As we were chasing the news of the market moves in real-time, we aired unconfirmed information in a banner. Our reporters quickly made a correction on air,” a CNBC spokeswoman said.

Here’s the problem: The earliest instance of CNBC running that chyron—at least as far as was noticed by anyone on Twitter—was 10:18 a.m. CNBC’s hosts, in the clip above, were talking about the pause at 10:14 a.m. Walter Bloomberg ran the “pause” headline at 10:13, and an even smaller finance account had it at 10:11 a.m. But to Slate’s knowledge, no media outlet or social media account has flagged an instance of its appearance anywhere before the rally actually began (at 10:10 a.m.).

Long story short, a mistaken headline of unknown provenance sent the stock market skyrocketing for seven minutes on Monday morning on hopes that the tariff crisis was over. But it’s not: Later in the morning, Donald Trump triggered further declines by announcing that he is going to impose another 50 percent tariff on Chinese goods on top of the 34 percent tariff he announced last week because he’s upset that the Chinese government responded to his first tariff announcement with its own tariff announcement. That said, markets did start rising again after that, despite the leak of the European Union’s own 25 percent retaliation plans. By Monday’s closing bell, the major indices were basically back where they had started. What wonders will tomorrow’s announcements and headlines bring?

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